PROFORMA

🧭COMPASS: Manchester 🧭

Sharing artist reflections from our residency in Manchester at Rogue Studios.

What a wily thing: a dancer, a swimmer, a creature… something to be tamed; the untameable. Of itself, its own self – unyielding, obstinate, adamant.
It is light, wind, air, energy. A windsock, a weathervane, a puff of air.
Lightmeter.
Here for now but not for long. To articulate the inarticulable.Precarity, absurdity, vulnerability, being.
 
During Compass residency at Rogue Manchester, I have continued exploring emotional and existential concepts of be-ing - what it is to be in a body, in a place, in the world, in one’s head - with site-responsive playful interventions that address site, space, material and convention through the idea of shelter.

Margaret O’Brien

Artwork: The Impossible - detail 8©️ Margaret O’Brien

Our second residency research day for COMPASS focused on central Manchester and Salford Quays. It was great to see different spaces supporting artists through either studios or exhibitions that provide nurturing environments to develop their practices 😊

Images 1-2:
We started the day at AWOL studios, graciously hosted by Jude Wainwright and met artists Georgia Noble and Sam Owen Hull in their studios. Jude has a solo exhibition at The Whitaker next month, you should definitely check out if you can 👏

Images: 3-10
Next stop, Delaine La Bas: Un-Fair-Ground, The Whitworth. It was a real pleasure to have a tour of this exhibition with curator Valentin Diakonov. The artist took over the main galleries to make a lot of the art on display while selecting artists from Venture Arts and artworks from the collection for the exhibition. Bursting with energy and passion 🙌

Images: 11-19
Last, but definitely not least, The Guardians of Living Matter by John Paul Brown and Sophy King at The Lowry. Very special tour with assistant curator Grace Buckley and both artists, incredible immersive, expansive and hopeful exhibition exploring future potential symbiosis of mycelium and ai 🍄

Thanks again to everyone for your generosity today 🙌






Norfolk
Cromer